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For an EXCELLENT article about this, read Malcolm Gladwell's "Blowing up", which you can find online for free:/p>

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm

Quote from the article:

If anything completely out of the ordinary happens to the stock market, if some random event sends a jolt through all of Wall Street and pushes G.M. to, say, twenty dollars, Nassim Taleb will not end up in a dowdy apartment in Athens. He will be rich.

It could equally well be asked, what would motivate someone to clamp down on the energy that fuels our economy during the worst economic downturn in generations?
There are tradeoffs to be made. But being motivated by one side or the other of the tradeoff interferes with objective science.
Instead of pushing a politically motivated agenda, why not look for common ground. Reducing dependence on foreign oil is an appealing goal to people both sides of the issue. Don't shove global warming theories down everyone's throat.

> Some real nice attempts at "Argument from Authority" there.>> So far it seems that the scientific consensus is that warming is real and likely to be contributed towards by human> activity.

The pot is calling the kettle black. Appeal to "scientific consensus" is also a nice attempt at "Argument from Authority" -- and an attempt to discredit the argument without dealing with the substance.

Someone help me understand how direct quotes from a plethora of highly credentialed scientists rates a 4, and an ad hominem attack on that post rates a 5????